This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.
Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-12-31
Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.
This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.
This table covers all strays and RTHs. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.
When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are slightly lower than the HASS average, which are at about 30% RTH rate (for dogs), and show a small decline in 2021 compared to previous years.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 2620 | 45 | 1.7% |
| Cat | 2020 | 2703 | 40 | 1.5% |
| Cat | 2021 | 3121 | 47 | 1.5% |
| Dog | 2019 | 3319 | 777 | 23.4% |
| Dog | 2020 | 2800 | 604 | 21.6% |
| Dog | 2021 | 2788 | 669 | 24% |
| Other | 2019 | 91 | 24 | 26.4% |
| Other | 2020 | 65 | 5 | 7.7% |
| Other | 2021 | 109 | 3 | 2.8% |
This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field, using the intake subtype ACO Pickup. Additionally, we also look at the return rate in the field vs that in the shelter, using the outcome subtype Returned in Field. Cats are excluded because there are very few of them.
The table shows that in 2019 there were 1992 strays coming in from the field, of which 102 were returned in the field (5.1%) and an additional 433 were returned from the shelter (21.7%), leading to a total of 26.8% return rate for field intakes. The percentages remain virtually the same in 2020 and 2021 as well. Since the overall RTH rates were around 21-24%, this suggests that field intakes have a slightly higher chance of being returned home compared to OTC intakes (next tab).
| Year | Strays | RTH_Subtype | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1992 | Field RTH | 102 | 5.1% |
| 2019 | 1992 | Shelter RTH | 433 | 21.7% |
| 2020 | 1586 | Field RTH | 81 | 5.1% |
| 2020 | 1586 | Shelter RTH | 319 | 20.1% |
| 2021 | 1464 | Field RTH | 90 | 6.1% |
| 2021 | 1464 | Shelter RTH | 317 | 21.7% |
This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs. Indeed, the rates are lower than field intakes for dogs across all years.
| Species | Year | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | 2019 | 2006 | 36 | 1.8% |
| Cat | 2020 | 2304 | 32 | 1.4% |
| Cat | 2021 | 2259 | 34 | 1.5% |
| Dog | 2019 | 1327 | 242 | 18.2% |
| Dog | 2020 | 1214 | 204 | 16.8% |
| Dog | 2021 | 1324 | 262 | 19.8% |
| Other | 2019 | 40 | 1 | 2.5% |
| Other | 2020 | 42 | 1 | 2.4% |
These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.
While the RTH rate (for dogs) is fairly stable over time, there are noticeable drop in summer months (prominently in 2019 and 2020). The patterns is fairly similar when looking at field / OTC intakes separately and thus not shown. The spike in December 2021 seems to be at least partly related to a lower intake volume that month (see intake volume figure in the next section).
This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.
Cat intake is highly seasonal, dog intakes have gone down significantly when COVID hit and haven’t gone back to pre-pandemic numbers since. This is probably no big news, just helps to provide us with some context.
Likewise, this helps us understand how most stray animals arrive at the shelter (in your case, 57% come from public drop offs).
The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 30 days for both dogs and cats.
That means that every successful RTH saves about 30 days of care on average at Lifeline - Dekalb, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.
This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of $30 per animal, if 250 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Lifeline - Dekalb about $225,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.
| Species | Outcome | Count | Average_Length_Of_Stay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | Other Outcomes | 6914 | 33.10 |
| Cat | RTO | 132 | 3.46 |
| Dog | Other Outcomes | 6835 | 33.44 |
| Dog | RTO | 2050 | 3.36 |
The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.
The data in this section includes stray animals for which found addresses were present. Out of all strays in the data (17616), about 500 had a found location of the shelter address, which is a reasonable percentage, but a further 1845 animals had unusable found locations for mapping – primarily street names with no number or intersection. These had to be removed, so the mapping below only shows those animals who did have workable data. ~150 animals were removed because they were found outside DeKalb County were also removed for simplicity of mapping. 230 animals that are not dogs or cats were not mapped due to their low numbers.
After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 7460 dogs of which 1761 were RTH.
The next section will show the same maps for 7023 stray cats.
Note that the area with the highest stray intake also has among the lowest RTH rate (top right).
This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks like a more exaggerated version of the first map.
Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.
| Found.Location | Count |
|---|---|
| 5258 Winding Stream Ct GA 30088 | 18 |
| 4690 Darlene Way GA 30084 | 15 |
| 5947 Bobbin Ct GA 30058 | 13 |
| 774 Inland way NW GA | 13 |
| 1312 Kittredge Ct NE GA 30329 | 12 |
| 2677 Beechwood Ave GA 30340 | 12 |
| 4437 Panola Rd Lithonia, 30038 GA | 12 |
| 1149 Fleetwood Rd GA 30316 | 11 |
| 2960 Northeast Expressway GA 30341 | 11 |
| 3345 Georgian Woods Cir, Decatur, GA 30034 | 11 |
This is similar to the stray intake map above, but for 7023 stray cats. Since only 96 of those were RTH, there is no point in mapping those across town.
Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.
| Found.Location | Count |
|---|---|
| 5258 Winding Stream Ct GA 30088 | 18 |
| 5947 Bobbin Ct GA 30058 | 13 |
| 774 Inland way NW GA | 13 |
| 1312 Kittredge Ct NE GA 30329 | 12 |
| 2677 Beechwood Ave GA 30340 | 12 |
| 4437 Panola Rd Lithonia, 30038 GA | 12 |
| 1149 Fleetwood Rd GA 30316 | 11 |
| 2960 Northeast Expressway GA 30341 | 11 |
| 3345 Georgian Woods Cir, Decatur, GA 30034 | 11 |
| 966 Meadow Rock Drive Stone Mountian GA 30083 | 11 |
This map shows different demographic information for DeKalb County.
One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a negative correlation between stray intakes and median household income (so poorer areas tend to have more intakes).
We could add this upon getting an Intake with Results Extended report, which would have the outcome addresses for animals (all other personal information there can be filtered out by us or before sending).
The following table breaks it down by species. Unfortunately, exam record was only able to be matched to 67% of intakes across the three years of data, so it is not entirely comprehensive (we had to assume Status Date was the same as the Intake Date, and matched using it plus the Animal ID). Yet, if we assume the success of matching exams to intake record is random (and not, say, more likely for animals with/out a microchip), this is a pretty large sample.
There are more dogs and coming in microchipped (19.3%) than cats (5.7%). Breaking this down by year (2019, 2020, 2021) showed no significant change in this breakdown.
| Species | Microchip | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | No | 5975 | 91.9% |
| Cat | Unknown | 156 | 2.4% |
| Cat | Yes | 372 | 5.7% |
| Dog | No | 4076 | 79.7% |
| Dog | Unknown | 54 | 1.1% |
| Dog | Yes | 986 | 19.3% |
This comparison is stronger after also making sure animals compared are similar on other characteristics, such as intake condition and age. But to get a first impression, for cats the RTH rate with chips is 15% compared to 1% without one, whereas for dogs, there is a 45% RTH rate for dogs with microchips vs 15% without chips.
The difference is obviously high, but it is worth also thinking about what might make the ‘yes’ category be at 45% as opposed to 100% (since there is presumably an owner), such as owners refusing, fees, wrong details on the chip, etc.
| Species | Microchip | Strays | RTH_Count | RTH_Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cat | No | 5975 | 50 | 1% |
| Cat | Yes | 372 | 57 | 15% |
| Dog | No | 4076 | 626 | 15% |
| Dog | Yes | 986 | 447 | 45% |
Found location - as mentioned above, many animals had to be removed from mapping because of unusable found locations – primarily street names with no number or intersection. Using street name and number, a block number, or an intersection of two streets would improve mapping abilities.
It is noteworthy that you track animals returned in field as you do – it would be interesting to talk through how that works for your field officers.
Other things we could show if we had the data for it:
Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.